Huawei is all geared up to launch the Honor 8 Pro smartphone in India on July 6, and the price is tipped to be Rs. 29,999, same as the launch price of its predecessor, Honor 8. The Honor 8 Pro launched as the Honor V9 in other countries a few days ago. In addition, Huawei is promoting with a tagline 'It's time to settle,' an opposite to the OnePlus's slogan 'Never Settle.'
So, the device will battle the recently announced affordable flagship phone, the OnePlus 5 in India, which starts at a price tag of Rs. 32,999. The Honor 8 Pro has a top-notch hardware, which makes it a compelling flagship phone. Let's take a look at whether Honor 8 Pro has enough power to take on the OnePlus 5 and become an alternative to it.
Design and Display
Undoubtedly, the Honor 8 Pro is a winner in both these segments because it has a gorgeous design, paired with a Quad HD display. At the front of the Honor 8 Pro is a 5.7-inch Quad HD display with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels that turns to a pixel density of 515 PPI. On the flip side, the OnePlus 5 has a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED Full HD display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a pixel density of 401 PPI. The design of OnePlus 5 seems to be an unoriginal one and the company heavily taken design cues from Apple iPhone 7 Plus.
Hardware and software
This is where things get slightly interesting, and OnePlus 5 comes on top. The Honor 8 Pro uses Huawei's in-house HiSilicon Kirin 960 chipset with a 2.4GHz octa-core CPU on top. Huawei has added up to 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Huawei might launch only the 6GB RAM variant in India.
The OnePlus 5 is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC and comes in two RAM and storage options-6GB/6GB, 8GB/128GB. That said, the hardware section goes to the OnePlus 5 itself.
In the software department, Huawei's EMUI has come a long way in the last two years and has improved a lot. It has a lot of features and all of them paired with a stellar hardware will make the device a compelling option. The OnePlus 5 runs on latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat based Oxygen OS, which is riddled with quirks and the company is on the verge of rolling out software updates to fix the issues.
Camera
Both the OnePlus 5 and Honor 8 Pro are aimed at shutterbugs. Following its tradition of employing dual camera setup in its flagship phones, Huawei has added the same functionality to Honor 8 Pro as well. The device has two 12MP sensors at the back. One sensor captures standard RGB shots, while one sensor captures monochrome shots. Huawei also added a bokeh mode to blur the background in the images.
The OnePlus 5 uses a 16MP primary sensor for standard RGB shots, along with a 20MP telephoto lens for lossless 1.6x zoomed images. The phone also comes with a portrait mode, which adds a bokeh effect to the pictures.
The OnePlus 5 has a 16MP front-facing camera, whereas the Honor 8 Pro comes with an 8MP shooter at the front.
Battery
Again the Honor 8 Pro comes on top because it has a 4000mAh battery, which easily lasts for two days with a single charge. The OnePlus 5 is employed with a 3300mAh battery which lasts for a single day with heavy usage. However, OnePlus's Dash Charge technology is way ahead of what Huawei used in the Honor 8 Pro.
Conclusion
On paper, the Honor 8 Pro is a compelling device and looks like a real competitor to the OnePlus 5. Last year's Honor 8 didn't win the race against the OnePlus 3 & 3T, but the Honor 8 Pro should give OnePlus 5 run for its money.
